Slash's Revenge Chapter 15 - Out There, a ninja turtles fanfic

*Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise.

*Author's Notes: Chapter 15 of 'Slash's Revenge' is here and it's got a little bit of everything – drama, humor, angst, Raph rage, and even a side of brotherly fluff.

A giant thanks to my readers, followers, and friends. I'm so very grateful to all of you. 8)

Chapter 15 – Out There

The sun had gone down several hours ago, making Raphael's search efforts slightly easier, but no less frustrating. He'd been scouring the city nonstop since storming out of the lair just before noon and had yet to turn up a single clue.

He shouldn't have been the least bit surprised…

It was the same thing, day after day, night after night.

Ever since Donatello's disappearance, the Hamato family had broken into literally hundreds of abandoned buildings in hopes of locating the missing turtle, only to find nothing.

The city was so huge, it was essentially like hunting for a needle in millions and millions of haystacks. Raph wasn't even sure where to search anymore. Everything started to look the same after a while, but still, he pushed on. Driven by his dark thoughts of Donnie lying in some cage, scared and alone.

The words from the hotheaded turtle's earlier nightmare continued to relentlessly mock him...

"You did this to me, Raph!"

"You left me to die!"

Once again, just hearing his little brother's voice made Raphael sick to his stomach.

"You sent me off to my death!"

It may have only been a dream, but everything Donatello said had been frighteningly accurate...

"You just don't want to admit that you're the reason I'll never be able to come home! You're the reason I'll never see our family again! This is all your fault, Raph!"

It was true.

"Slash isn't the monster! YOU are!"

Every last word of it.

Raph was the monster.

All of a sudden, the turtle in red felt his legs wobbling underneath him, like they were made of gelatin. His momentum soon came to a screeching halt and he carefully lowered himself into a sitting position before he fell down, allowing himself a much-needed chance to rest. All the while, his missing brother's voice continued to taunt him...

"I'm sorry."

Wrapping his arms around his shins and pinning his legs against his chest, Raph buried his face into his knee pads. He wanted nothing more than to keep searching for Donatello, but he needed a moment to gather his wits about him.

Progress was going far slower than Raphael had hoped. Perhaps his decision to go off on his own had been a little rash, but it just didn't feel right, being back at the lair doing nothing anymore. If his little brother was out there suffering, twenty-four-seven, on account of him, shouldn't Raphael be as well?

After a few more minutes of stewing, it finally occurred to Raph that sitting around on the rooftop feeling sorry for himself was no more productive than sitting around the lair. Neither one was going to bring his little brother back.

Letting out a heavy sigh, the temperamental turtle pushed himself up to his feet just in time to see two shadowy figures approaching.

Great! Just great.

"How long have you two been tracking me?" There wasn't any mistaking the irritation in Raphael's tone. As usual, he made no attempt to hide his disgust.

"The fact that you had to even ask that question tells me you need to be more aware of your surroundings."

Leonardo's obvious jab at Raph's ninja skills instantly rubbed the hotheaded turtle the wrong way and he felt every muscle in his body simultaneously go rigid.

"I'm not in the mood, Leo! Just leave me alone!"

As was oftentimes the case, Raph's standoffish behavior did absolutely nothing to deter the oldest turtle. Leonardo could be just as stubborn as his volatile brother when he needed to be. "If you wanted us to just leave you alone, you probably shouldn't have brought your T-phone with!"

Rolling his eyes skyward, the red-masked turtle cursed himself for forgetting about the GPS function his genius brother had built into their mobile devices. That app was both a blessing and a curse. Raph should've known that was how his brothers had found him.

"So, I suppose you're here to try to talk me out of my decision." Though there were two turtles standing before him, Raph's eyes remained fixed on Leo. That's because he knew darn well his older brother would be the one to make the biggest stink over his blowup back at the lair.

"What you did was incredibly stupid and selfish, Raph!"

Though Raphael had been bracing himself for such a comment, it still managed to catch him off guard. His immediate reaction was to get defensive.

"Selfish? I came out here to find our brother! How is that selfish?"

Leonardo blow out a sharp exhale of breath that sounded curiously like a snort before angrily tossing his hands up in the air. Of course Raphael was going to argue with him. Why should Leo have expected anything less?

"Did you honestly believe that running off, sais blazing, was gonna help find Donnie? You're no good to him if you get yourself killed!" As hard as the leader in blue had tried to keep his voice down, he just couldn't. Raph's actions were far too reckless not to be admonished.

"Well, it's a lot better than doing nothing! All this time, we've been waiting around for the sun to set again, we could've been looking for him!" Normally, this would've been the point during the argument where Raph would get up in Leo's face, but something compelled him not to. Instead, he walked towards the roof ledge and stared down at the streets below. There was a strangely vacant expression on his face in lieu of his usual scowl.

Leonardo, on the other hand, was still clinging tightly to his anger like a shield. Anything to hide the hurt he was feeling inside.

"Oh, would you please just listen to reason for once in your life? You know we shouldn't be up on the surface during the day! It's too risky!" This was something their father had ingrained in them ever since Leonardo could remember. And while the concept had seemed simple enough, Raph was apparently having a difficult time grasping it.

Following instructions had never been Raphael's strong suit...

"Hey! I never asked you guys to come with! I can do this on my own!" Purposely keeping his shell to his brothers, the red-clad ninja tried to push them away, both verbally and nonverbally.

"You're not the only one who misses him, Raph!"

Those nine words instantly stole the hotheaded turtle's thunder. Not just because of what had been said, but also, because of who had said it.

Raph turned and looked directly at his baby brother for the first time that night only to see tears shimmering in Mikey's bright, blue eyes.

"We may have already lost one brother… I don't want to lose another."

Hearing Mikey say they may have 'lost' Donnie made it nearly impossible for Raph to breathe. The hotheaded turtle couldn't stop himself from thinking back to the last thing Donatello had said to him in his dream...

"It's too late, Raph. I'm already gone."

Was it really too late?

Had they lost Donnie?

As if sensing Raph's internal strife, Mikey wrapped a hand around his big brother's forearm and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Someone once told me you can't run away from your problems. You've gotta face 'em head on."

It took every fiber of Raph's being not to roll his eyes again. He, instead, opted to cast his gaze away from his baby brother's while a low-pitched, warning growl rumbled around in the recesses of his throat.

"I seriously don't want to hear any Splinterisms right now." The bite in Raph's tone was much softer than Mikey was accustomed to, but it was still intimidating enough to make the youngest turtle hesitate with his response.

After a few nervous gulps, Michelangelo scraped up enough courage to speak again.

"It's not a 'Splinterism.' That someone I was talking about was you, bro."

This revelation made Raph's stare meet Mikey's, once more, if only to check if his jokester brother was being serious. When Mikey's face remained neutral, the hotheaded turtle blinked stupidly several times before rasping out, "I said that?"

"Well, those weren't your exact words. I mean, you told me to stop being such a pansy and said something about me needing to grow a – Um, you get the idea. Anyway, my point is, running away isn't the answer, dude. It doesn't solve anything."

Raph's iron will faltered slightly, but seconds later, he pulled his arm out of Michelangelo's loose grip and started to build his defenses right back up.

"At least it's better than sitting around on my – " the temperamental turtle paused for a moment to tone his language down to PG-level for his younger brother's sake – "tail doing nothing! This is all my fault, Mikey! I need to make this right! Donnie's out there, who knows where, because of the awful things I said to him! That's why I can't go back to the lair. Not until I find him. I don't deserve to go back." Each sentence that Raphael spoke was quieter than the previous until his voice tapered off into nothing more than a whisper. Though his features were hard, the lines on his face showed the strain from trying to keep his expression indifferent; his eyes fluctuating between rage and guilt.

Leonardo moved towards Raph on cautious feet, knowing there was a good chance that his volatile brother would lash out at him for getting too close. The oldest turtle then reached out and rested a hand on top of Raphael's left shoulder. Much to Leo's surprise, his hotheaded brother remained stock-still, like a solemn statue, staring straight ahead.

"I know you think you're to blame for what happened, Raph. But punishing yourself like this – it isn't gonna help Donnie. He needs you to be strong."

"What good is being strong if we don't have a clue where he is? At least if I keep looking, I increase our chances of finding him. I need to do this, Leo. Because staying down in the lair – I can't do it anymore. I need to be out here, doing something." The words held no trace of anger, just defeat. Raph dipped his head down to avoid eye contact, trying to mask his grief as best he could, but his brothers could see it as plain as the green on his skin.

"Then we'll all look together." Leonardo tightened his grip on Raph's shoulder, which only made the hotheaded turtle's posture sag all the more.

"I can't ask you guys to do that. This! This is all on me." The response couldn't have possibly contained anymore remorse, even if the red-masked warrior had tried.

"This isn't about who's at fault, Raph. This is about making our family whole again. We do this as a team. Remember our rule? No turtle left behind."

Being reminded of the very rule that he had cited to Donnie the night Slash had first attacked them almost caused the dam holding back Raphael's emotions to crumble. He pulled out of his older brother's grasp and tried to walk away, but Mikey and Leo each grabbed a hold of one of his arms.

From behind him, Raphael suddenly heard a strange, crinkling sound. Before he could glance back to see what it was, a crumpled, nasty-looking paper bag was dangling inches in front of his face.

Despite the fact that neither of his brothers could see his expression, Raph still wrinkled up his beak in repulsion and glared daggers at the bag. "What the heck is this?"

"Since you totally missed breakfast, lunch, and supper, I packed you a little something. A dude's gotta eat, right? Especially if we're gonna be out here all night and day."

Though he tried to fight it off, a warm smile stretched across Raph's face. Even when things seemed at their darkest, Mikey could always bring light to any situation.

Shifting his smile into the slightest of smirks, Raph spun on his heels so he was facing his brothers once again. The bag followed, as if of its own volition, which he knew wasn't actually the case. It was just Mikey being a goob.

Raph took a giant step backwards to distance himself from the rather foul-smelling paper bag. "Why does it look like it's leaking?"

A small, nervous chuckle squeaked out of Mikey.

"We, uh, didn't have any clean plastic containers, so I just kind of threw a bunch of stuff into the bag. There's a leftover slice of pizza, some ramen noodles, a pickle, a chili-cheese burrito... Oh, and a popsicle for dessert!"

Both Leo and Raph's mouths curled into grimaces as they recoiled away from the soggy bag, afraid the thing was going to drip on them.

Just as the oldest turtle opened his mouth to politely suggest they save the contents of the bag for later, he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. Whipping his head around at almost breakneck speed, Leonardo scanned the rooftops surrounding them, but nothing was there.

Maybe it was just paranoia, but the leader in blue could've sworn he had seen movement.

Raphael was the first to notice Leonardo's sudden interest in the adjacent buildings. "What is it, Leo?"

"I – I'm not sure. I thought I saw something."

The two younger turtles drew closer to their blue-masked brother and visually scanned the area, but they, too, failed to spot anything out of the ordinary.

"Probably was just a pigeon." The bluntness of Raph's response forewarned that anger wasn't far behind.

Rather than test his hotheaded brother's chronically thin patience, Leonardo decided to drop the subject. "Yeah, probably." There was an unspoken 'let's get moving' in the blue-masked ninja's tone that neither of his brothers questioned.

Still, even as the three turtles started bounding from rooftop to rooftop, the leader couldn't shake the sudden gut-feeling that someone was out there, watching them from a distance.

Five buildings later, Leonardo's intuition proved to be true.

That's when the brothers heard a familiar voice call out, stopping all three of them dead in their tracks.

At first, he had to do a double-take. He hadn't seen any of the siblings out on their own since he had kidnapped the scrawny one. The handful times he had left the apartment to forage for supplies, he had used his keen tracking skills to hunt down the three brothers for the sole purpose of checking up on their progress. If one could even call it 'progress.' There was no way they were ever going to find Donatello at the rate they were moving, not to mention they'd been searching in the totally wrong direction the whole time. It was as if they didn't want to find their precious brother.

Slash's immense shoulders racked with a silent laugh as he edged closer to the lone turtle now sitting on the rooftop not far from where the larger reptile slithered along the shadows.

It would be so easy to swoop in for the kill. To strike while Raphael was alone and not paying attention.

But something stopped Slash from doing so. Something Donatello had said back at the apartment...

"S – Stop! Stop! Please! Spike! I know you're still in there! P – Please! Don't let him do this!"

"SHUT UP! Spike isn't here anymore!"

"Yes, he is! Spike, listen to me! The mutagen created Slash, but it didn't destroy you! Deep down inside, you're still Spike! The same turtle Raph took in. The same turtle he loved!"

"L – Loved?"

"Yes. He loved you... a lot more than h – he ever loved me."

Keeping his beady eyes glued on Raphael, Slash dared to creep even closer, so that just the street separated the two of them. It looked as though the smaller turtle was trying to curl himself up into a ball, with his legs drawn towards his chest and his face pressed into his knees. Even if Slash had been standing right out in the open, the turtle in red would've been completely oblivious to his presence.

It was evident that Raphael was distraught, but rather than finding the red-masked turtle's suffering amusing, like he had before, Slash felt a pang of something akin to guilt stab straight through him. This confused the larger mutant more than anything, although he didn't have a whole lot of time to ponder the strange sensation. Not after he spotted Leonardo and Michelangelo slowly approaching Raphael. The mere sight of the 'fearless' leader made Slash instantly shift into angry-mode; a sentiment he was much more well-versed in.

Dropping down into a low crouch, so as to stay hidden in the shadows cast by a billboard sign, Slash watched on while Raphael pushed himself up to his feet. The sadness the red-clad turtle had exhibited was now gone, replaced by unmistakable anger, much like Slash's mood had shifted just moments before.

Slash couldn't quite make out what the three brothers were saying to one another, but he could see that the two oldest turtles were arguing, as usual. More than likely, Leonardo was chewing his brother out for not being a good little soldier, and Raphael, in turn, was no doubt expressing his genuine lack of appreciation for the comments.

It looked as if the hotheaded turtle was readying to clobber his big brother a good one when Raphael suddenly turned away from his siblings and walked towards the edge of the building, blankly gazing over the side of the structure they were gathered on.

This sparked Slash's curiosity and he unknowingly started to lift his head up, as if attempting to hear the actual conversation.

It wasn't until the youngest turtle spoke that Raphael spun around to face his brothers again. Slash could see by his former 'owner's' droopy posture that the sadness had returned, clearly indicating that something the littlest one had said must have struck a chord. Then, Michelangelo reached out and grabbed hold of Raphael's arm. The hotheaded turtle's immediate response was to twist his head away, but only for a moment or two. When the youngest sibling spoke again, Raphael's eyes were back on him. A few more verbal exchanges followed before the temperamental turtle pulled his arm away, but the leader in blue was quick to butt in.

Slash had to muffle a growl.

Of course, Mr. Perfect can't keep his big mouth shut...

Certain that Raphael was going to tear into the eldest brother something fierce, Slash gazed on with unmasked anticipation, thirsting for an epic fight. But much to the largest mutant's disappointment, no confrontation followed. He stared in wide-eyed disbelief as Leonardo appeared to be comforting Raphael. Never one to accept sympathy, the hotheaded turtle soon attempted to walk away from the leader, but the blue and orange-masked brothers were quick to stop Raphael's momentum. The youngest sibling then held something up in front of his second oldest brother's face. It looked to be a paper bag, but Slash couldn't tell for sure.

Shifting himself up to his feet, the huge, spike-covered mutant strained to see what it was that Michelangelo was toting, but the distance spanning between them made it impossible to be certain. Slash unwittingly crept away from the shadows concealing him, trying to get a better view. That's when he saw Leonardo's muscles suddenly tense. Lightning fast reflexes allowed Slash to duck behind a roof vent just as the blue-clad turtle's gaze snapped towards where the larger mutant had been standing only a half-second ago.

Slash held his breath while he leaned the back of his head against the cool surface of the large roof vent, keeping his fingers crossed that the eldest brother hadn't spotted him. It wasn't that Slash didn't think he could take on the three smaller terrapins. He just hadn't gone out looking for a fight.

At least, not tonight...

All he had been trying to do was get some fresh air to clear his head, but seeing Raphael just seemed to make things even more complicated than before. Slash had never felt so conflicted inside. The sheer rage that had been fueling him for weeks still burned as bright as ever, but it was somehow different than before.

Something had changed...

Letting out a ragged exhale, Slash found himself staring down at his hands, once again, and for the second time that night, all he could see was red.

Only this time, it wasn't blood that he was staring at.

It was the fabric of an eerily familiar kimoto, and much to Slash's horror, the oversized rodent donning the traditional Japanese garment looked to being seeing red as well.

To be continued…

*More Author's Notes: I really wanted to end the year with a bang, so I went with a major cliffhanger. I hope you all approve.（＊〇.〇）…！

As always, please take a moment to favorite, follow, like, reblog, review, and/or comment if you're enjoying this or any of my other stories. I would absolutely love to know.

Thanks so much for reading. I appreciate it more than words can possibly say. I wish everyone the happiest of holiday seasons. *virtual hugs and cookies* CJ